Man, I feel sorry for John McCain

He’s like some tragic fallen hero out of literature. After years and years pursuing his once-noble goal, he finally has it within his grasp – by selling out, one piece at a time, everything he once believed in – only to be eclipsed by some nobody, know-nothing V.P. pick some genius in his organization pulled out of their hat. He’ll make it into office, a man’s man on a woman’s skirt, and his entire term will become a “How many days till Sarah Palin is our first woman President” dead pool. I mean really, I think it won’t be long before he’s roaming the White House at night like Marley’s Ghost, shaking his chains in rage and embarrassment, bemoaning the presidency that might have been. The presidency that might have been if he had won back in 2000, when he still had some vestige left of his integrity, when he was at least somewhat of a maverick in Washington.

President McCain circa 2001 sure as hell wouldn’t have surrounded himself with a bunch of neocon dumbfucks, and if they were forced on him as a condition of being granted the nomination, he would have had the stones to tell the to go fuck themselves once in office.

Now he’s just this ghoulish, sad shadow of his former self. Flinging his POW-time yarn around to deflect completely unrelated questions (usually about his apparently too-many homes, but that’s another column) like an animatronic robomatron on power-saver mode. All the policy switches in the last few years, kissing Jerry Falwell’s ass in public after rightly refuting him only a few years before – in the 2000 election. His actions look faker than Abe Lincoln’s in Disney’s Hall of Presidents.

If John McCain of 2000 could see John McCain of 2008, I think he’d want to kick him in the ass.

I referred to it as arrogance last night to The Missus, and she took some umbrage. I was referring to Barack Obama. He’s making all the same mistakes McCain did in 2000. He’s too “good” to climb down off of his high horse and risk his precious decency. What arrogance! To have the country within your grasp, but blow it because you didn’t want to risk your reputation as a nice guy?

Intoxicated by the sound of my own voice, I continued to wonder aloud if Obama would come back in 12 years and win the White House at the cost of his soul. Is that always the price? I think one’s soul has to go before one can become a politically viable candidate. Look at Bill Clinton’s recent shameless race-baiting and alleged gender-bias prevaricating. Look at Lyndon Johnson; pompous asshole when elected, broken man when he retired. Another war president. Bush was an anomaly, the same as Sarah Palin is.

That of course is the genius of Palin. They’ve managed to recreate the Bush persona in a sunny, easy-on-the-eyes next-door type not tied in any way to the last 8 years worth of unbelievable bullshit from Bush and his crowd. She’s insulated by the fact of her very inconsequentiality. They test-drove this idea with Dan Quayle way back when, but their mistake that time was picking a thin-skinned east-coast-looking preppie-type for the gig - and they still won before Bill Clinton came on the scene. They needed down-home and next door, like Bill Clinton, and they got it right next chance they got, with Bush Jr. And now with Sarah Palin.

With all the horrific financial shit in the news, Palin refusing, on the most patently specious of grounds, to cooperate with investigations about possible abuse of power while she was in office as governor, John McCain saying until yesterday, Monday morning that America’s economic house of cards was in ship-shape… oh my god, it’s all so sad! I’d hate to see what would happen if his teleprompter said, “[waves hands around and throws feces like a monkey]”.

And to watch Obama repeat McCain-2000’s mistakes this time around, when we need so desperately to win! If only he could skip directly into that inevitable cynical, compromised sell-out that wins elections in time to win this one. Joe Biden’s doctors discover a “brain cloud” which treatment requires his full attention, Obama sucks it up and invites Hillary onto the ticket in time for the vice-presidential debate, we finally win one for a change, again with a morally-flawed standard-bearer, and the Supreme Court doesn’t get to Roger the Constitution in the pooper for the next umpteen years.

And in the final reel, John McCain has gone back to the Senate, reclaimed some of his maverick cred, voted with Obama to fund universal health care and all that good shit. It would be a Jimmy Stewart moment truly worthy of a man who would have then twice in his life refused to cave in to moral compromise in spite of overwhelming temptation to. Cue the orchestra. Drop curtain.